often dying

Her heart grows in September
space is birthed to air pain
previously pressed into corners
decorated with spiderlace -
needing debriding. I am weeding

with gravel stuck knuckles
in the relentless rain
the mud rises and I pluck
roots from our ancestral graves
begging and gnawing at my ankles
for our blood to mix and thicken

Why there are caricatures on your eyelids,
dancing in a glass sun!
Writing country songs 'bout sodomy
an effigy, Oh how you love me!
 
we've both been ripped apart
you almost vertically,
I'm horizontally precise
but our insides have been outside more than most
placentas and heart valves in rotting compost

when I reached the slate floor
I washed it with Her tears
I found seventy-seven love poems
I wrote for you this year.
　
all those dead words and incensed benedictions
and we are here
left leaving, grieving and still breathing.